diff --git a/tests/python/unittest/test_operator.py b/tests/python/unittest/test_operator.py
index 7db07596d7f8..91ebc657b7c5 100644
--- a/tests/python/unittest/test_operator.py
+++ b/tests/python/unittest/test_operator.py
@@ -7661,6 +7661,7 @@ def get_output_names_callback(name, arr):
     check_name(us_sym, ['data', 'pooling_data', 'pooling_output'])
 
 @with_seed()
+@unittest.skip("test fails intermittently. temporarily disabled till it gets fixed. tracked at /~https://github.com/apache/incubator-mxnet/issues/13915")
 def test_activation():
     shapes = [(9,), (9, 10), (9, 10, 10), (1, 9, 10, 10)]
     dtype_l = [np.float64, np.float32, np.float16]